Saturday, January 2, 2010

THEFT

When I was a hungry child during World War II living with partisans andothers on the run from the Nazi regime, we stole from peasants who werehoarding their food. The Catholic Church called that 'Mundraub', theftfor food, and declared it not a sin. When the partisans hunted wild boarand rabbits in stretches of forests owned by German and Polisharistocrats, who were the only ones allowed to hunt in their owndomains, the former called it poaching, the partisans called it 'law ofroad'. When I moved from the poor to the wealthy side of the fence inItaly after the war, the wealthy expected their servants, drawn fromwithin the poor, to steal a certain amount. In Sicily the poor,exploited by absentee landlords, formed the Mafia and called theft evenmurder justice. In the European proletariat theft was often accompaniedby murder. Theft is as old as civilization: it is usually a function ofpoverty and hunger.

So why do so many paste that label on to the Gypsy/Roma minority, as iftheft were a Gypsy gene. Whenever I lived among Roma, I was never afraidto leave my belongings with them. The Roma I talk to, consider having tosteal or beg to survive an act of shame. Even Hitler knew that amongnomadic Gypsies there was no crime. It was only after they were forcedoff their treks into places of confinement and given only the poorestpossibilities to survive, that petty crime entered their way of life.And petty crime it is, because, unlike theft by non-Gypsies, theirs isof hunger and not accompanied by killings. So in the New Year let'spull that unjust label off the Gypsy/Roma name, make sure that those whohave shared our living space for centuries are given the same rights andopportunities. Close the gap that has separated us for so long.